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Talk:Main Page
Use this page to discuss design and content changes to the Main Page. For general wiki discussion, please visit the Community Portal. ---- __TOC__ Proposed Gallery Update While I really like the new gallery feature that uses the book covers to link to each book, I do think the covers themselves could potentially do with a bit of updating, since the cover art is drastically different on each one. My idea is simple; let's use the covers used for the most recent printings of each book. Where I live, Corgi has repackaged each using covers by Steve Weston (who did most of the covers for UK releases) or Les Edwards (who did the covers for the ones Steve Weston didn't do; some of which are already used here for Skies of Pern, Dragon's Kin and Dragonsblood through Dragon's Time. Of course, I am aware of the potential problem with the covers in that different covers for each book have been used in each country. For example, Michael Whelan did many of the covers for US editions, but his style and Les Edwards' don't quite match, whereas Steve Weston's share similar colour schemes (use the link below to see their work; you'll see what I mean). If we used those two, we'd have a sense of uniformity and neatness - plus it would look really good on the main page! In addition to this, I'd suggest we crop these covers to focus on the image not covered by text, so that we have simple square icons that link to each book. As for which covers should be used on the page for each book, my initial suggestion would be to use the most recent covers for the reasons mentioned above, then either place pictures of the original covers as they appeared in different countries further down the page, or simply link to a Pern fan-site; http://www.annemccaffrey-covers.fr.st/, that contains images of every cover used for each book. Alternatively, we could do what the Temeraire Wiki does and put the covers for both the US and UK releases near the top. AMCAlmaron 21:13, May 26, 2012 (UTC) :Here's a quick mockup to give you the general idea. The pictures here are from the site I mentioned above and a few bookstores I found on Google Images. I should probably also mention that this sort of look is used on the inside cover of a number of the Corgi reprints; showcasing the various covers of the books published so far - this seems to have stopped, as of Dragonheart; methinks it's because they've run out of room! : AMCAlmaron - I like your idea for making the Gallery page cleaner. I never realized that there were so many different covers. I was just checking out the ISFDB site and found more than a dozen different covers just for Dragonflight. : I'm going to take on the project of gathering all the different versions of cover art with the idea of displaying them within a section of each book page. : Stephenaug 17:18, May 27, 2012 (UTC) ::Cool! Hey, I've had an idea that could solve which covers to use; what if we put a button on the front page next to the Gallery section that switches the images between US and UK covers when you press it? I'm thinking of the vaguely interactive main pages that some wikis have - compare this one http://submachine.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page. ::I was also thinking that we could add links to the short stories; using the covers of their anthologies, and perhaps even sort the covers into which Pass/Interval they occur in. AMCAlmaron 05:33, May 28, 2012 (UTC) ::: If your referring to the sliding image (Slider), you might be able to get that to do it. Another way would be to offer up different galleries through the main navigation bar. For example, we could have a top menu of "People - Places - Books - Galleries - (etc)". A sub menu under "Galleries" could contain "Book Covers - People - Places - Maps - (etc)". And then, under "Book Covers", we could break it down into whatever we decide. ::: Stephenaug 14:24, May 28, 2012 (UTC) ::::And in addition to that, we can use some of the book covers for pictures of characters when we run out of those from the People of Pern or the board game http://www.pern.nl/art_gallery/official/wood-board.html! For instance, that's clearly T'lion and Gadareth on the cover of the US version of Dolphins of Pern; we could crop that image and use it on both their pages. AMCAlmaron 06:37, May 29, 2012 (UTC) ::: This is interesting... The Hunger Games Wiki lists all versions of their book covers within the article. - Stephenaug ::Ooh, I like that format! Let's use that! AMCAlmaron 06:51, June 4, 2012 (UTC) Formatting * Gallery section : I would like to make the gallery go 4 across instead of 3. I saw earlier that there may be a problem viewing it and I was wondering if it that was because of the 4 across setting. * What's New section : I would like to clean up some of the whitespace so it is not so long. I'm wondering if there is a method that it will show only the most recent changes, so we don't have to keep adding to it. Are there any issues with the above? - Stephenaug 14:59, June 8, 2012 (UTC) :The gallery was originally four across; I shifted it to three because it messed up the layout on the old Monobook setting. Of course, since that only affects me and those viewing pages using the Monobook setting, it probably would make sense to revert that. I also wonder if we should consider grouping the books on it to some degree - if we slightly shrink the size of the boxes, we could do things like put the three Second Interval books (Dragon's Kin, Dragon's Fire, Dragon Harper) on one row, and then the five Third Pass books (Dragonsblood, Dragonheart, Dragongirl, Dragon's Time, Sky Dragons) on the row beneath that (Ninth Pass might be a bit difficult to do though; and would probably require multiple layers). We could even consider adding covers for the short stories! :I also agree that there's too much whitespace; I just left most of the What's New updates so casual visitors to the Wiki would see that work is still being done, and it hasn't been abandoned. AMCAlmaron 02:17, June 9, 2012 (UTC) ::Here's another concept image; this one includes the short stories (with a green border) and the other books (with a teal border). We could potentially remove the list of books and just use this, and put all the other material on the main page in its place; balancing the pages better! Apologies for the low quality; I made it rather quickly... ::Of course, we might need to spend some time figuring out ideal section titles, and what order to place the books in. For instance, The Masterharper of Pern and Runner of Pern technically take place in the Second Long Interval/Eighth Interval, so they should have their own section (my mistake!) and Red Star Rising/Dragonseye mostly takes place in the First Interval, so should that get its own section? AMCAlmaron 03:17, June 9, 2012 (UTC) I really like the concept! I think of MHoP as a ninth pass story so I'm OK with it being with the other ninth pass books. If we ever get more participants, we could have further discussion. Right now, unfortunately, it seems to be just you and me. Do you mind if I put this together? It was your idea, but this is the kind of stuff I really like to do. *Colonization/First Pass *Second Pass *Second Interval *Third Pass *Sixth Pass *Ninth Pass Stephenaug 12:50, June 9, 2012 (UTC) By the way, what font did you use for the titles? I like it. - Stephenaug 12:54, June 9, 2012 (UTC) :Sure, feel free to do this! :As for the names, I'd suggest First Pass over Colonization, if only for uniformity between titles - on the other hand, we could perhaps merge it with the "Second Pass" books and give it a new title, sort of like in my picture. I'm still thinking we need to mention the Eighth Interval/Second Long Interval somewhere, we can always figure that out later. :The font is from the game Myst IV: Revelation, but I only used that because I couldn't figure out which one was being used for the titles. :By the way, that reminds me, I think we should come up with a different wiki colour scheme (or even a picture in the background; the UK version of the Atlas of Pern's cover has a dragon flying high in the sky over Lemos, Bitra, Benden, Igen, Keroon and Nerat that could work) to replace the default blue and white - and a picture to replace the "wikia" icon in the corner. Perhaps a reddish scheme - for the Red Star - and that picture of Anne McCaffrey? AMCAlmaron 21:29, June 9, 2012 (UTC) ::Color Scheme: We probably should use earthy tones - did you have anything in mind? ::Background Image: I had the same version of the Atlas, and made a background image out of the cover. You may have to refresh your browser to see it, but take a look at it. First attempt. I will try and clean it up a bit. ::Font: I found the Myst Revelation font online and it's really close to what LexiLex used. I'm waiting for her to get back to me about what font she used and then we can decide. ::Wikia Icon: I don't think we can change that icon since it is a link back to the main Wikia site. ::- Stephenaug 14:46, June 10, 2012 (UTC) :::I've realised I'm not seeing a number of these edits because I'm using Monobook - I'll probably switch back at some point, but I think it makes my computer laggy...Either way, I had a look at what you've done and I like it! Ignore my comment about the Wikia Icon; it's only visible on Monobook. :::BTW, the map you've put on the Main Page slider thing isn't accurate; it's got two huge islands in the east - probably an AU map? I've got a map that I think we should use; I traced a map (that was already a tracing, I think) and added information from the Atlas of Pern and also other canon locations that weren't listed in there - it still needs some editing; there's a few mistakes, but there's a blank template online that we can start from scratch on; perhaps even chopping it up to focus on specific areas of Pern. The link to the map's on my User Page. AMCAlmaron 04:16, June 11, 2012 (UTC) What's New notes derived from Blog Posts I created a template that places the most recent 8 Blog Posts in the What's New Section. It looks at all user blogs and will include them if the category of the post is "What's New". Feel free to create you own blog posts to test it. Stephenaug 00:31, June 9, 2012 (UTC) Gallery Need feedback on direction I'm going with the Gallery section. Does the collapsible feature work for you? What should we do to improve formatting? etc... - Stephenaug 20:31, June 13, 2012 (UTC) Layout Change ? Not sure what you are trying to do with the changes made to the main page. It looks broken now with some of the main sections moved to the right sidebar. I'll leave it for now as you might still be working on it. The good thing about wikis is that you can always undo things. - Stephenaug 12:26, June 15, 2012 (UTC) I may be wrong, *just guessing*, but it looks like you were matching the length of the expanded Book Portal with the sidebar so you moved things onto the right column. Except that the title images are way too big so it looked broken. Were you able to see the collapsible feature that I added to the Book Portal? It was a Javascript function that I added (but doesn't seem to be working now). When it worked, the Book Portal first appears with only the header images and you have to click on the 'Show' button to see (expand) the content of each one. I was trying that to see if we could cut down on the length of the main page. - Stephenaug 15:36, June 15, 2012 (UTC) :Yeah, that's sort of what I was going for; match the columns on the right with the expanded books to try and balance the page and cut down on length. If you think the book sections should stay closed, then let's shift a few things back. :I didn't touch the title images since I didn't think I could edit them properly; I figured someone would fix it when they saw it. AMCAlmaron 20:53, June 15, 2012 (UTC) Let's leave it this way for now. Once I did get the collapsible sections working, they didn't thrill me. -Stephenaug 01:46, June 16, 2012 (UTC) Introduction Section Only just got the idea; we need to add an "Introduction" section somewhere on the wiki to explain and justify any speculations and changes we make to the Pern canon - for instance, the problem with the Ninth Pass timeline listed on the Inconsistencies page. Another example would be with the dating system in general; I've noticed another wiki that briefly mentions the Pern books uses dates with 9P to refer to the Ninth Pass. The closest thing to this in the books is the PP (Present Pass) dating methods; we haven't seen how they refer to past dates, but we can assume something like the 9P example would be used. Anyway, if we had an introduction page, we'd be able to say that the dating methods weren't necessarily accurate, but we're using them because it's shorter than writing "The Fifteenth Turn of the Ninth Pass". AMCAlmaron (talk) 00:08, July 13, 2013 (UTC)